Have the body and sleeves mostly constructed; just need to add cuffs, attach sleeves, add the waistband, and of course get a bunch of snaps, since I’ve decided to go with snaps. The trickiest part so far was figuring out how to insert the pockets, as the pattern itself

Inside---showing pocket inserts and Hong Kong bindings on seams

doesn’t have any. However, they are in, mostly correctly. I’m using Gigi’s tutorial on Hong Kong seam bindings to finish the inside seams. I’m not as good at it as she is. I think part of my problem is that I don’t cut my bias strips wide enough. Anyway, Hong Kong binding + topstitching means each seam in this jacket (and there are a lot!) is stitched 4 times! Crazy. I found myself trying to adjust the construction process to minimize number of times I had to re-thread the sewing machine. Oh, I also figured out a workaround to increase my machine’s tension so the topstitching thread isn’t (or is less) loopy on the inside. You know how when you’re winding a bobbin the thread goes from the spool around that little doohickey on the top before it goes to the bobbinator? Well, (at least on my machine) that doohickey has a bit of a spring on it for catching the thread and adding some tension. I found that by winding my thread around that thing before threading it through the rest of the machine, I got a LOT more tension. No more

Front side pocket. On examining my RTW jean jacket, these pocket linigns are cut as part of the jacket pieces, folded to the inside. Not a bad idea. Ah, well---next time.

loopiness underneath! Unfortunately, I didn’t think to try this until I was about two-thirds of the way along, so there’s a lot of loopy topstitching. Ah well. Live and learn. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to use the darker (right) side of the fabric or the lighter, shinier (wrong) side. So I used both! Keeping track of which was which was a bit of a pain, though.